The last two weeks have been interesting. The smoke which kept us from walking for a few days that finally cleared. The blue skies were back as were the birds and little critters..
Then there was some walks in the evening with some amazing skies..
an attempt to make mysore pak during lunch..
the end result was okay.. put a little too much ghee and kept it on the stove a minute longer.. so while the taste was good, it was a little hard.. it has been at least 4 years since I tried making mysore pak and the next attempt will be better..
practice makes perfect.. and the one thing I finished in the last two weeks is learning the entire Shiva Thandava Stotram..
Made this color coded chart based on the template for understanding the meaning of every verse using a primary theme with sub concepts (green is primary message, blue second, red third, orange and gray fourth and fifth level).. helps understand the meaning and remember (uploading this one as a large jpg that prints as a single page in hopes others can use this to learn).
and here is my attempt to recite this earlier today..having a camera in front of you makes you conscious.. can say it without any glitches off camera..
The days are going by fast. The usual work, yoga routine all from a mat in the same place is still ongoing.
There is the occasional parking lot yoga practice which makes my day!
It is just that I have been meaning to blog for a long time and never got to it. Skipping watching a debate and writing this seemed to be a better idea!
Learning something new, practicing things and creating some things that actually put a smile on your face are much better options for spending time!
Last weekend I had gone for a grocery run and saw the empty samosa area in the Indian store. They used to have piping hot samosas there all the time.
San or me would always get two samosas from any desi store run.. it was something we both do and it invariably makes the other person happy.. we share it with chai.
When I told my kids how I missed samosas and it has been a long time since we had any, they piled up on me by saying they miss a lot of things like Chipotle too.. so I should shut up and make my own samosas just like how they are making their own mexican food at home!
Samosas are labor intensive and not easy to make on a small scale. Still having been encouraged (challenged if you take it in another way) by some fellow yogis.. decided to make it the weekend project.
there is a lot of ground work required. I got 15 samosas after almost 90 minutes of effort.. guessing you can make 30 of these in 2 hours with same oil.
Ended up with 1/2 the masala leftover which we plan to use to make parathas tomorrow.
Recipe used (scaled everything down to 15 samosas)
1. 3 aaloos (potato) boiled, peeled, mushed
2. 1/2 cup peas
3. one clove garlic (dont need it actually), 1/2 onion (again you can skip this), 1 red chilli, 1 spoon of corriander seeds (dhaniya) - two spoons water and make into a paste.
4. small bunch of cilantro
fry a spoon of jeera (cumin) in two spoons oil and add the paste, then add the cilantro, peas, potato and make the curry.
Separately made the dough with 2 cups all purpose flour and 2 spoons of clarified butter (ghee).. think oil will be okay as well if you are vegan. Let the dough sit for 30 minutes under wrap.
Make the samosas by using water to seal the dough after flattening and filling it with a spoon and a half of the potato masala.
Trick is in the frying. Keep it at medium high to begin with.. after 30 seconds, drop heat to medium low and wait for a good 3-4 minutes before taking the samosas out.. Then set it medium high again, wait for 5 minutes before adding next batch in. The temperature toggling is what takes time.. so it makes sense to do 50 samosas at one time in a large kadai like in the street vendors.. Bihari (our tea shop from college days in Varanasi) used to make 25 at a time in his large kadai.. they would all come with a consistant golden brown color and a smooth texture..
One thing I realized.. the second batch came out with smooth surface like in store samosas simply because the moisture had gone a little bit as they waited. That is one trick I will use next time. That was not mentioned in any video...
there are many recipes that use flour tortillas or pastry sheets to make samosas ... but if you are going to do something..... go for it with all your heart. No short cuts.
The samosas came out very well. The feedback from family "masala is really good. The skin of the samosa is really thick in some places, but taste is really good."
They all liked the second batch better than the first batch.
Had fun doing this.. have allergies thanks to the gardening effort earlier in the day.. so you can hear me sniffling all the time..
Now I am late for yoga class. Fortunately yoga class is only 20 steps away now instead of a 15 minute drive.. and we are on a flexi schedule.
Here is a video of how this was made..
If I can do this, so can you.. so try it from scratch. It is intimidating when you watch all those videos. For a first attempt this came out well !
Recently I felt like eating Rava dosai after coming home late at night after a yoga class.. given time constraint, decided to make upma and smear the upma around the Chatti to get a dense rava dosai roast on the vessel..
that came out pretty good.
Today I did a double at BYSJ. My MIL who is visiting joined me for the first class. When she came out, she asked me "do you want me to make you some upma or something ? I will be able to make it for you by the time you come home!"
I told her "no, it is okay.. I feel like eating Maggi noodles after class".. Nothing beats some carbs and spices after back to back yoga class for me!
Somehow in the middle of the second class, I started remembering all types of Upmas.. every upma I had ever remembered over the years etc.. it was like my brain had issued a grep command inside the memory for "upma" and presented the massive result base scroll through my wide open eyes and nose..
Came home and saw that MIL had kept a small cup (to tell me she would also like some Maggi)! Told her that she should not have reminded me of upma between two yoga classes.. so Plan change! Upma for dinner.
Instead of making the usual Rava Upma, decided to do this dosa-upma thing again and show her..
there are two issues with this.
1. I put jeera (cumin) in the upma to make the dosa come out good.
2. it does not scale very well.. Remember surface area and volume do not scale the same.. so the upma per MIL became the consistancy of Karudaththu maavu.. Felt bad.. we still ate the upma.. It was okay for my standard but did not get any thumbs up from her..
the roast on the other hand was really really good!
Lifting the roast from the chatti was... priceless!
I have to improve on scaling the proportions and use less or no Jeeragam on the next try...
